Within the prior art, it is well known to convert visual status of station-specific telephony functions (here after referred to as call status information) to audio information so that visually impaired people can receive the call status information. Station-specific telephony functions include but are not limited to the following: call operations, telephony terminal states, messaging systems' information for a telephony terminal, etc. The prior art has provided the audio information for call status information by utilizing special hardware to perform voice synthesis. This hardware was designed specifically for visually impaired users, and consequently, was expensive. In addition, the use as special hardware limited the visually impaired users to a few specific telecommunication terminals.
In addition, the use of specialized equipment resulted in the fact that the users of this equipment were given little if any ability to determine when the audio call status information would be presented and at what frequency. Whereas, the specialized equipment could be modified via programming to provide custom features for individual users; the cost of such provisioning was prohibitive plus the delay normally would be in terms of many months for such customization to be performed by the manufacturer.